


A Little Fall of Meteors

by Bobcatmoran



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Astronomy, Canon Era, Gen, Les Amis de l'ABC - Freeform, meteor showers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-13
Updated: 2014-10-13
Packaged: 2018-02-20 23:22:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2446862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bobcatmoran/pseuds/Bobcatmoran
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A meeting of Les Amis de l'ABC is interrupted to go witness a meteor shower. Featuring early 19th century astronomy, references to a meteor shower that actually happened in a town called L'Aigle, and Jehan's stylin' new raccoon hat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Little Fall of Meteors

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the Midsummer Mini Misfest on Tumblr, and if you go to [the fest's account](http://minimisfest.tumblr.com/post/89602717095/a-little-fall-of-meteors-fic-by-bobcatmoran-art-by), you can see the fantastic illustrations that [PilferingApples](http://archiveofourown.org/users/PilferingApples/pseuds/PilferingApples) and [diminutive-fox](http://diminutive-fox.tumblr.com/) made for it.

“Does anyone know where Jean Prouvaire is?” Enjolras asked, looking over the back room of the Musain with a frown.

“Don’t fret about it, Enjolras,” Courfeyrac said. “He is doubtless running on Prouvairian time — that is to say, that of one who left his watch at home, either out of forgetfulness or due to some new notion that time is but an illusion.”

Enjolras pulled out his own watch and glanced at it. “Well, he was supposed to be here over an hour ago with his revisions to that women’s rights pamphlet. I hope nothing has befallen him.”

“I wouldn’t worry overmuch if I were you,” Bahorel said from his chair in the corner, tilted back dangerously far on two legs. “He may not look it, what with those sticks he calls arms and legs, but our young poet is quite capable of taking care of himself.…speak of the devil.” Bahorel and his chair fell forward with a thunk upon seeing who had just entered the back room.

Although the newcomer’s face was hidden behind a scarf that wound round his neck several times, it was precisely this scarf, knit with more enthusiasm than skill and twice as long as Jean Prouvaire was tall, that identified him as such.

As if this unique accessory wasn’t distinctive enough, Prouvaire was also sporting a singular fur cap, grey-brown in color, with a striped trail hanging down from the back.

“Is that a new hat, Prouvaire?” Joly asked, looking at it with a mixture of surprise and amusement.

“It is indeed,” was the reply. Prouvaire reached behind him and fingered the tail nervously. “The merchant said it had belonged to a voyageur from America. It’s made from  _raton laveur_.”

“Washing rat?” Courfeyrac asked, trying to keep the horror from his voice. “Prouvaire, you haven’t seriously purchased a hat made from  _rat_ , have you?!”

“It’s a damned peculiar rat if it is,” Bahorel said. Look at that — that’s the tail, right? Never seen a rat with a bushy tail, much less a striped one.”

“The Americans call it  _raccoon_ ,” Prouvaire said.

“So what is a…raccoon then?” Feuilly asked, pronouncing the unfamiliar word with care. “Not a rat then, I presume?”

“Some sort of small bear, I think,” Prouvaire said.

“I thought they were more akin to wildcats,” Joly said. “Or weasels, perhaps.”

“More like some sort of arboreal dog,” Combeferre said.

“That’s a shame,” Prouvaire said. “It would be more exciting if they were bears. Dogs seem very…domestic.”

“They’re not actually dogs, just akin to them,” Combeferre explained. “ _Procyon_ , doglike.”

“I should like to see a bear,” Prouvaire said, ignoring him.

“You just saw one when you went to the Jardin des Plantes with Joly and me before Christmas,” Bossuet pointed out.

“But I should like to see one in the  _wild_ , in its natural state. It would be very fierce and powerful and not have small boys yelling at it while it slept.”

“It would probably rip your throat out,” said Bahorel.

“I still should like to see one all the same,” Prouvaire retorted.

“Might I see that?” Joly asked, gesturing towards Prouvaire’s hat. It was handed over, and Joly ran his fingers through the fur. “It doesn’t look or feel like bear. Does it keep you warm enough when you’re outside in the cold? It has been a nasty winter.”

“Warm enough, but — oh — outside!”

“Before you set off on another tangent, Jean Prouvaire, did you have those edits?” Enjolras asked.

“Oh, yes, right here,” Prouvaire said, pulling the papers from a voluminous coat pocket. “But outside! Quickly, you all need to see, before they’re gone!”

“What is it?” Combeferre asked, already putting on his overcoat.

“Shooting stars, oh, the sky is full of them!”

A flurry of activity ensued, as cloaks and overcoats were donned, hats were sorted out, and Bossuet was rescued from where he had somehow gotten tangled in Joly’s scarf. “I’m fine, I’m fine, just tied to this chair,” he said. “Perhaps I’ll bring it along, as it seems to have formed quite the attachment to me, and I wouldn’t like it to feel rejected. That way, I’ll have a place to sit in comfort while the rest of you fellows stand.”

“Has anyone seen my hat?” Courfeyrac asked, peering under tables with a worried frown.

“I have an extra scarf which you can tie around your head for warmth if it doesn’t turn up,” Joly said, picking at a knot in the scarf that was holding Bossuet captive. “You really shouldn’t go out with your head uncovered in this weather, lest you catch a cold.”

“Thank you for the offer, Jolllly, but between the faux pas of going bareheaded or wearing a scarf knotted under my chin like an old woman, I’ll risk the head cold.”

“You really shouldn’t, especially given how the chill has been so damp lately. A cold could easily become pneumatic,” Joly said fretfully.

“And it’s a risk that he won’t have to take, thankfully,” Enjolras said. “Here, Courfeyrac, it was hanging underneath my coat.”

“Ah, thank you!” Courfeyrac exclaimed, setting the wayward hat upon his head, then offering an arm to Enjolras. “Shall we?”

“We shall, if everyone is ready.” Enjolras scanned the room. “Jean Prouvaire, will you lead the way?”

“There’s decent enough viewing from the Place Saint-Michel, but if we go near the Jardin du Luxembourg, we’ll get a clear view without any buildings in the way,” Prouvaire said, leading the group down the street and walking backwards so as to talk to his friends.

“What about the trees?” Grantaire asked.

“They’re all in rows, so perhaps if we look between their ranks? We can always try it and then come back if the view proves unsatisfactory,” Feuilly said. “Watch the lamp post,” he warned Prouvaire.

Neatly winding his way around it, Prouvaire suggested, “Or if we could get onto a roof, that would offer the best view. Grantaire, don’t you live around here?”

“Near enough, but it’s my upstairs neighbors who have roof access, and we are no longer on speaking terms. My own rooms have no way of getting to the roof, unless you construct wings of wax and feathers and fly up, although doubtless by the time you finished crafting them it would be morning, the shooting stars would have vanished, and I hear that using such a contraption in sunlight does not tend to end well. There is also a drainpipe that you could climb if you were feeling adventurous, I suppose.”

At Bahorel’s thoughtful look at this suggestion, Combeferre exclaimed, “No one is climbing up any drainpipes! I am all for the best possible view of this astronomical phenomenon, but not at the expense of broken limbs. The view from the Jardin du Luxembourg should be quite adequate. And here we are.”

The friends scanned the sky. It was a cloudless night, the stars standing out clearly against the black sky.

“Oh! There!” exclaimed Courfeyrac, pointing above the tree line. “Did you see it?” he asked his friends.

“Did you make a wish?” Prouvaire asked. “If you wish upon a falling star, your wish will come — there’s another one!”

“And one over there!” Joly said, pointing in the opposite direction of Prouvaire. “Bravo, Prouvaire, what a find!”

“I’ve never seen so many at once,” Grantaire said.

“They aren’t truly stars falling from the sky, are they?” Feuilly asked, sounding worried. “We won’t look up at the skies tomorrow night and find the constellations incomplete, will we?”

“I don’t think so,” Bahorel said. “I feel like we would hear about it if stars went missing every time there was a shooting star.”

“But there are so many in the sky, and most of them not well-known. Would a single one missing necessarily be noticed?”

“It might not even be one that we  _could_  notice,” Joly said. “There are multitudes of stars too dim to see with the naked eye. At least one planet as well — witness Herschel finding a heretofore unknown planet by training his telescope upon it. So if these are stars that we otherwise wouldn’t see, then no, we wouldn’t notice their movements. I suppose the only reason we can see them now is because they’ve come nearer with their movement across the heavens and are therefore newly within our field of vision — like how a single candle isn’t visible from far off but sheds enough light to read by if you’re right next to it.”

“Or they’re not stars at all,” Combeferre said. “They could very well be great rocks falling from the sky, superheated so that they glow like coals.”

“Rocks?” Grantaire said, looking doubtfully at the lights streaking the sky.

“There was a rain of stones from the sky in L’Aigle that proved to be extraterrestrial in origin. They were quite warm right after landing and produced streaks across the sky not unlike these.”

“Huh. Glowing stones.” Feuilly said, keeping his eyes on the sky. “Still doesn’t explain  _where_ they came from though, really. Perhaps they’re from some other civilization up there.”

Combeferre frowned at the sky, tracing the paths of the meteors with his fingers. After some time, he said, “It looks like they’re coming from Quadrans Muralis.”

Grantaire looked back and forth across the portion of the sky Combeferre was looking at. “Quadrans Muralis? I could tell you that there is Boötes, and there is the Great Bear — do not tell Prouvaire there is a bear hiding in the stars, lest he decide to pay it a visit — but I was unaware that either of them used navigational tools.”

“It’s right there. See? The quadrant’s arms spread outward in a triangle leading from the bend in Draco towards Boötes.”

Grantaire squinted. “If you say so. I suppose it’s no more of a stretch than the ancients’ trick of connecting a zig-zagging string of dots across the sky in a long string and saying, ‘Behold! Here is a dragon!’ as though you could not play the same trick with any number of stars. It’s all little more than seeing patterns in puddles of spilt ink anyhow. More art than science, even when it’s the art of seeing scientific instruments.”

“It’s a perfectly legitimate constellation,” Combeferre said. “Lalande described it, and you can find it in any modern, up-to-date star chart.”

“I yield, I yield,” Grantaire said, throwing up his hands in front of him. “Why do you say these shooting stars — or is it shooting rocks — are coming from there anyway?”

“Here, watch the next few shooting stars,” Combeferre said.

“I thought you said they weren’t stars,” Grantaire said, grinning.

“I am sacrificing accuracy for the sake of common vocabulary and comprehensibility. Now watch them, and note their direction of travel.”

Silence from Grantaire as he looked at the sky with a furrowed brow, then, “It’s as if — if you traced their paths onto a map of the sky, they would look like a series of perspective lines, leading to a vanishing point right about there,” Grantaire said, pointing at a location in the northern sky.

“Right in Quadrans Muralis,” Combeferre said smugly.

“But is it actually  _in_  Quadrans Muralis?” a muffled voice asked from behind them. Combeferre and Grantaire jumped, then turned around to see Jean Prouvaire, who pulled his scarf down from his face and continued. “I mean, does their origin have to be amongst the stars, or could it be much closer? If they really are rocks from out there somewhere,” he waved his hand, indicating the sky, “then in order for us to see them and especially for them to rain down upon L’Aigle, they would have to be very close indeed.”

“What’s this about rocks raining on me?” Bossuet asked, turning at the sound of his name. “I seem to have avoided that misfortune thus far, so perhaps you’re speaking of a bird of a different feather?”

“L’Aigle the town in Normandy. They had a rain of rocks from the sky which Combeferre says was akin to what we’re viewing now,” Prouvaire said. “Say, Lesgle, you never lived there, did you? Because then you would have been L’Aigle of L’Aigle.”

“No, and at any rate, I rather prefer myself being L’Aigle of Meaux, your dear Bossuet. And,” he added, “if I had been there, knowing my luck, I’d have had a sky rock crash through my roof. We’re not in any danger of that here, are we?”

“I’d imagine that rocks crashing to the ground from the sky would be loud as thunder. We’d surely hear it,” Bahorel said.

“I hope that doesn’t mean they’re falling somewhere else then,” Feuilly said. “I’d imagine rocks crashing from the sky outside your home would be terrifying, much less crashing _through_  it.”

This horrifying vision let to a brief period of silence, before Enjolras spoke up. “It seems to have slowed down.” Indeed, the white streaks across the sky were now so infrequent that a few minutes had gone by since the last one.

“Well, it seems that the show is just about over,” Courfeyrac said. “What a marvelous display. What do the rest of you say to going back inside and getting something to warm up? I am fairly certain that I can charm Louison into making a cauldron of spiced wine. Consider it my treat, in celebration of this night of shooting stars.”

A chorus of agreement, spiced with a, “Courfeyrac, I can pay you back,” from Feuilly was the response, and Les Amis paraded back to the Musain under the clear, starry sky.

**Author's Note:**

> Special thanks to my little brother for giving this a read-over.
> 
> _Notes: Raccoons are not bears. Sorry, Jehan. Their closest relatives are actually ring-tailed cats, which, just to confuse everyone, are not actually cats. Jehan is in good company, though, as Carl Linnaeus himself originally classified raccoons as bears._
> 
> _The Quadrantids are a real meteor shower, usually occurring sometime around January 3–4. They’re notable for being relatively heavy in intensity, but very short in duration, and for being named after a constellation that is no longer recognized (sorry, Combeferre)._
> 
> _Likewise, the meteorites that fell on L’Aigle were a real thing that actually happened in 1803._
> 
> _Unfortunately, Les Amis missed a real doozy of a meteor shower by one year and an ocean away. The Leonids of November 12–13, 1833, over the United States reportedly had tens of thousands of meteors an hour, were so bright that they woke people up, and ignited the scientific community’s interest in studying meteors. Records of meteor showers prior to then are sketchy, so la la la I’m pretending there were unusually heavy Quadrantids in 18mumbletywhenever._


End file.
